New from Cambridge University Press!

Edited By Keith Allan and Kasia M. Jaszczolt

This book "fills the unquestionable need for a comprehensive and up-to-date handbook on the fast-developing field of pragmatics" and "includes contributions from many of the principal figures in a wide variety of fields of pragmatic research as well as some up-and-coming pragmatists."

This volume shows that the notions of embodied or situated cognition, whichhave transformed the scientific study of intelligence have the potential toreorient cultural studies as well. The essays adapt and amplify embodiedcognition in such different fields as art history, literature, history ofscience, religious studies, philosophy, biology, and cognitive science. Thetopics include the biological genesis of teleology, the dependence ofmeaning in signs upon biological embodiment, the notion of imageschema and the concept of force in cognitive semantics, pictorialself-portraiture as a means to study self-perception, the differencebetween reading aloud and silent reading as a way to make sense of literarytexts, intermodal (kinesthetic) understanding of art, psychosomaticmedicine, laughter as a medical and ethical phenomenon, the valuation oflaughter and the body in religion, and how embodied cognition revives andextends earlier attempts to develop a philosophical anthropology. (Series A)